What is a blog?

At this moment, I am participating in the creation of three corporate blogs, and lately, a few people dear to me also started blogging… with what they personally have to offer… for their own (and my own) pleasure. The same questions impose here…

I will upload some fresh lectures on corporate blogging… a couple of simply useful things.

However, I wanted to state something else… How do I see blog?

When I open somebody’s blog, I want to have a sense of looking the author directly into his wide open eyes! That’s the impression I want! This is when a blog goes to the readers and comes back to them… because I love looking people in the eyes… eyes wide open.

If, for some reason, I visit somebody’s personal blog and encounter a squinty, boring look, I rarely make connection to the blogger… this usually means that the blogger has no clear attitude or won’t show it or has no idea of what he wants to accomplish with the blog and the community around it. Sometimes it means that the blog is sludgy… you know, like it hides some intentions… it provokes, leads me on…

That I don’t like..

This is, naturally, a personal impression of mine. How I see and love blogs.

When talking about corporate blogs, the situation is somewhat similar, but still different in certain aspects (more complex).

The similarity lies in the fact that in order for the corporate blog to be successful from the very start, we have to forget all about making the blog! The making of an effective corporate blog necessarily (and primarily) implies the making of effective bloggers!

We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool on-line. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play? – Cluetrain Manifesto

It is essential to build healthy foundations of a corporate blog… there are many ways to do this, and the regional and world practice is (ful)filled with various examples (you all know the story of Direct2dell, and WalMartcommunity.com).

As for me, I think that the simplest and most effective recommendation as to how to corporate-blog successfully is the sentence by the CEO at Sun Microsystems (Oracle), Jonathan Schwartz he shared with his (blogging) employees:

• Do not do anything stupid.
• Write about something you know.
• Make it interesting!

That much! That exactly! The essence!

*Digression: the same CEO recently quit the Sun exclusively sharing this on his Twitter status and in haiku…Too cool!

So, my wish is for you to give me a deep, wide-open look in the eyes when I open your on-line diary! And when I close my eyes for a moment or deny you of anything, hit me in the head with it on ddj.com so that I can come to senses as soon as possible.

;)

p.s. I don’t know if I’ve ever done this in public, but I am thankful to the end to Varagić for making me start blogging in three steps! One of these days I shall write about what that decision meant for me. PRiceless![:]